


Vignettes

by kikicecchetti



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Johnlock - Freeform, pretty much all post-reichenbach angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-05
Updated: 2012-07-08
Packaged: 2017-11-09 06:16:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,938
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/452263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kikicecchetti/pseuds/kikicecchetti
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of Sherlock one-takes I gifted in ask boxes on Tumblr.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This will be updated.

The rain never stopped in Lithuania, and maybe Sherlock had picked this locale because he wanted to remember those periods of time when rain kept the interesting cases at bay. Those lazy, water-logged days of being in his blue silk dressing gown, gently stroking John's cream-coloured jumper as he idly turned the page of his book. If he closed his eyes, after pressing down the plunger on his needle, wrapped in his blanket in that foreign country; it was hard to remember that he was dead.

******

Sherlock considered the needle before him, eyeing it like an old friend he'd not seen in ages. He knew that with one push of the plunger he could make these thoughts of John clawing at his mind endlessly disappear for a time. But there weren't enough drugs in the world to escape that hollow, agonising crash when he came down and remembered that, once again, narcotics were his only option to keep that screaming, aching hole sitting squarely in his core.

******

"You're a fool," Irene's cool voice spoke at Sherlock's back. He didn't turn to face her, still transfixed by the scene in front of him. He was standing slightly hidden behind a tall hedge across the street from the house with the soft warm lights illuminating a lone figure at the dinner table. "You think you saved him?" Irene asked, and Sherlock felt an unexpected and vicious seizing in his chest. "He's empty without you." Sherlock knew it was true as he watched John limp into the kitchen.

******

Sherlock's face was steely when he caught sight of Sebastian Moran leaving the Moscow airport on a frigid November morning. His mind flashed and he felt imaginary tears on his face and the wind on the roof-top of St. Barts blowing his long coat violently. Those moments plagued him, and the image of John extending his hand towards the roof as Sherlock said his last words to John haunted his dreams. Even when Moran was dead, would he ever be able to return?

******

It had been the look in John's eyes, in that fraction of a moment when the red laser's point appeared in the centre of Sherlock's forehead. It was like some metaphorical dam had been demolished in John's eyes, and they flashed with more emotion than Sherlock had ever believed possible. Maybe Sherlock could not experience normal emotion, but staring into John's eyes and thinking this might be their last moment on earth, he thought he was starting to understand love.

******

Sherlock had always believed he was above human emotion. He'd observed them play out in other's lives for years, and yet her understood virtually nothing about what he thought was a superfluous part of human existence. That was before he began living in the grey, monotone world of his 'death'. It wasn't the aching emptiness he felt without John in his life. No, Sherlock finally understood and viscerally experienced human emotion when he put a bullet in Sebastian Moran's head.

******

It was just a moment, to bring everything crashing down. It was a cool winter's day and John was at the surgery. He'd walked for a bit before hailing a taxi, and the wind had nipped at his face pleasingly. Hed felt that his life might be beginning to heal from the gaping wound that was--he still couldn't quite think the name. But as John sat at his desk and stared at the calendar in front of him. The date slapped him across the face. And he was on the road in front of St. Barts.

*****

Moran returned to London. Sherlock had known that it was a bad idea to follow, but his desperation pushed aside his usually rock-solid logic. And now he stood on the roof of Bart's again, facing Moran's gun pointed at his head, he almost welcomed the bullet waiting in the chamber. An explosion and nothingness. The door to the roof of St. Barts flew open and Sherlock looked at John's face twisting in confusion. "Sherlock?" As Moran turned, Sherlock pulled his gun and shot the sniper in the back.

*****


	2. Second Round

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> My ficlets/drabbles left in Tumblr ask boxes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's one happy, fluffy one.

John didn't realise it was going to be so hard. Of all the scenarios his traumatised brain had devised of Sherlock's impossible miracle, none of them were like this. He sat on the edge of the detective's bed and stroked his hair gently. Sherlock's virtually emaciated form trembled in need. As he moaned slightly, the withdrawals from the narcotics causing him indescribable pain, John bent and brushed away the hair clinging to the sweat on Sherlock's brow. "It's okay," He whispered. "I'm here."

**********

The council seemed to be going retro, as John started seeing more blue police call boxes popping up around London. It was the first thing he'd been able to notice in the grey cloud he lived in without Sherlock. After a few weeks, John would see a man exit the phone box, his long trenchcoat billowing behind him. John thought back to that long, wool coat he'd come to love. Walking absentmindedly, lost in his fog, he walked into the man. "John Watson" He said gleefully. "I've been looking for you."

**********

It had been a year. One year since Sherlock took that step off the roof of St. Bart's and changed everything. In that year he'd seen the majority of Eastern Europe taking down Moriarty's network one by one. With each kill his eyes darkened; with each passing day, he lost the hope that he would ever return to 221B and the man with the cream-coloured jumpers who had shown him that he was capable of more than just his deductions. Then man who had given his life more meaning than he thought possible.

**********

Sherlock wondered if Moran was holed up in Ireland simply because he knew Sherlock was following him. A slate grey sky had threatened rain for the past three days and an agonising boredom and emptiness had descended on Sherlock. All he could remember was the one holiday he'd gotten with John, when they'd gone to Ireland together, and just how drastically different the country was without him. Sherlock took a deep breath; his scarf didn't even smell like 221B anymore. It smelt like nothing.

**********

It felt like John's lungs had collapsed when he caught site of The Woman standing outside Speedy's. Everyday he made a trip across London to Baker Street. And everyday he had stood in front of 221B, unable to knock on the door. Irene Adler stared into John's eyes and she could see that he truly believed it. In his mind, Sherlock was dead. He had succeeded after all.

**********

"Sherlock! Wait!" John called behind the detective as he walked swiftly into the darkness. On holiday in a small, secluded hamlet in Portugal, Sherlock had insisted on going out to the large open field next to the inn and look at the position of the stars at the different latitude. Sherlock was already lying on his back when John arrived, and he wrapped his hand around John's ankle. John slid to the ground next his detective, intertwining their fingers. "I love you." Sherlock said simply.

*********

For John, a good day was seeing a man wearing a navy scarf and not immediately falling into an incapacitating panic attack. He had accepted the fact that Sherlock was gone, and no miracle could bring him back, but he still wasn't able to move on, to create new relationships. He still felt like a part of him had been violently snatch out, leaving his core mutilated with jagged edges throbbing with pain. He saw a long, dark wool coat. Today was not a good day.


	3. Round 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A longer drabble inspired by a gifset of the scene when John tells Sherlock about meeting Mycroft and he says, surprised, "A friend?"

Sherlock balked when John said the word ‘friend’. It was something he had investigated in detail. That feeling of connection to another human being; somehow people found it comforting. It would eventually seep, like Sherlock’s brewing tea, into every part of their lives. This proved a problem. A conflict of interest. It clouded judgment and impeded subjectivity. And subjectivity convinced Sherlock that self-sacrifice for another, a highlight of true friendship, was simply moronic.

But an enemy. That he understood so perfectly. The constant scratching at the back of his mind. An itch he could never scratch; to bring them down. Those that wronged him; those that wronged others. Watching them fall due to simple logic was sublime. The surgical precision of deduction was what attracted Sherlock. Everything meant something. And to throw away that transcendent ability would be simply tragic.

***********


	4. Who-lock AU

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Who-lock AU wherein The Doctor is faced with his fate and John is faced with saving his friend.

The council seemed to be going retro, as John started seeing more blue police call boxes popping up around London. It was the first thing he'd been able to notice in the grey cloud he lived in without Sherlock. After a few weeks, John would see a man exit the phone box, his long trenchcoat billowing behind him. John thought back to that long, wool coat he'd come to love. Walking absentmindedly, lost in his fog, he walked into the man. "John Watson" He said gleefully. "I've been looking for you."

"I've finally found you!" The odd man exclaimed. "The location gyrator is acting up again. Hello! I'm The Doctor." John heard the man he'd seen exiting blue phone boxes throughout London. "What--who are you?" Was all he could say. "The Doctor, and I'm going to help you find Sherlock Holmes." John's heart seized and he felt his head begin to spin as he heard 'The Doctor' say that name. In shock, John didn't even protest when The Doctor pulled him into the police box.

John knew he had finally lost it. He was utterly mad and should immediately turn around and go to hospital. "Yes, yes, it's bigger on the inside," The Doctor said, running to the strange center of the...he didn't even know what to call it. "It's the TARDIS. Time And Relative Dimension In Space. It's a space ship. Well, it's a time machine. Well..." The Doctor began working on the levers on a circular control board. John heard a wheezing roar as a piston in the center began oscillating.

"Are you mad?" John exclaimed when he'd finally found his voice. "Yes, most certainly, yes. But I'm the madman who is going to find Sherlock Holmes." The Doctor smiled widely at John. "Sherlock is dead." John said in a monotone. The Doctor pulled a lever while depressing a large yellow button and John felt TARDIS stop moving. "No, no, no. He's just been extracted, and my TARDIS is the only way you can get him back." John's heart exploded with the news Sherlock was alive. But what was extraction?

"Extraction?" John's head was spinning and The Doctor ran to him and took his head in his hands. "John, you need to listen to me. This is going to sound mad, but it is the only way to get your friend back." John nodded mutely. He was being offered the chance to bring Sherlock back from the 'dead'. "James Moriarty was not a man, Sherlock was right about that. He was someone who was after the power of Sherlock's brain to control the world." John could barely breathe. "What's his name?" "The Master

John didn't like the sound of that. "If he's not a man, then what is he?" The Doctor surveyed John with an unreadable expression. "He's a Time Lord. And he's supposed to be dead." John didn't really understand what he meant, but he was determined. "So, what am I to do?" The Doctor's face lit up and he rushed to the door. Leaning his back on the door, he looked at John, "You're going out there with me."


End file.
